since October 7, the number of Israeli profiles has exploded on the dating application Tinder

In Beirut, more than half of the dating app’s accounts are Israeli profiles. A figure which can be explained by the war between Israel and Hamas, and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

Since October 7, the number of Israeli profiles has exploded on the dating application Tinder in Lebanon. This is a rather unexpected consequence of the war between Israel, Hamas, and its ally Hezbollah. The Lebanese Tinder is full of Israeli profiles, which represent more than half of the accounts in Beirut, according to the daily The Orient by day.

So I did the test: I created a fake female profile and I came across dozens of people with Hebrew first names, and photos of them, often in military fatigues. They are always located extremely close to me, often less than 1 km away, while the border with Israel is more than 100 km to the south.

Israeli jammers that would cause the application to crash

But then, why are all his Israeli profiles located in Beirut? Some initially believed that these Tinder profiles were those of Israeli secret agents present on Lebanese territory. But in fact the explanation would be much simpler: to connect profiles, Tinder uses users’ GPS coordinates. This allows you to flirt with people near you.

Except that since the war, the Israelis have increased the power of their GPS jammers, in particular to disrupt Hezbollah missile fire, which also distorts the location of phones. And that also makes Tinder buggy.

In Lebanon, responding to messages from Israelis is a crime

So hey, we of course received some insults from these Israeli users. This is not surprising, since Lebanon and Israel have been at war for decades. But Israeli Internet users are for the most part quite amused, even intrigued: they ask how things are going on the other side of the wall, there are some who get scared and block us when they understand that we are in Beirut. And then there are those who send us calls for peace or invite us to come and have a drink in Tel Aviv. But we must not dream: Tinder is not going to reconcile the two peoples.

Especially since responding to messages from these Israelis if you are Lebanese is completely illegal. Here, the law prohibits any communication with the enemy. It is a crime punishable by several years in prison.